I want you to think about this question for a moment—what comes into your mind when you think about God? More specifically, what characteristics do you think about Him possessing? Pastor A. W. Tozer once wrote, “Were we able to extract from any [person] a complete answer to the question, ‘What comes into your mind when you think about God?’ we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that [person].”1
That’s quite a claim! Did you think that your answer to that question could actually predict your spiritual future—in other words, your progress in developing Christian character? I must say that I think Pastor Tozer is correct, because in Romans 12:2, the Apostle Paul says that we become transformed or changed “by the renewing of [our] minds.” Christian growth happens as we change the way we think, and the cornerstone of the way we think is the beliefs that we hold about God.
Today, we are going to begin a series on the attributes of God, which is just a fancy term for those things that are true about God—the traits that accurately describe Him. We will continue this series for a while each time that we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together so that we can learn more about this Being who has shown us such love and mercy through the death and resurrection of Christ.
This morning, we are going to discuss an attribute that describes the way in which God exists—namely, that God is eternal. To say that God is eternal means that He had no beginning to His existence, and He will have no end to His existence. He has simply always existed, and He always will exist; or as the angels in heaven declare in Revelation 4:8, God is the one “who was, and who is, and who is to come.” That statement is true at any point in time that you can imagine. If you could travel to any moment of history—past or future—you could truthfully say at that moment, “God was, God is, and God is to come.”
Let’s look at some of the biblical statements that describe this attribute of God. In numerous verses, God is simply referred to as the “eternal” or “everlasting” God. Isaiah 40:28 is a good example of such a verse: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” This attribute seemed to have a particularly strong impression on Moses, perhaps because he was the first to receive from God the divine name Yahweh, or Jehovah—which simply means “I am.” In Deuteronomy 33:27, Moses told the children of Israel, “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” And in Psalm 90, which Moses composed, he wrote in vv. 1-2, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
Job and his friends spent a fair amount of the book of Job talking about the nature of God, and in Job 36:26, a man named Elihu says, “God is exalted beyond our knowledge; the number of His years cannot be counted (CSB).” Now think about what this means: if the number of God’s years cannot be counted, then his lifespan must be infinite—without beginning and without end. If God had a beginning or an end—and thus a limited lifespan—you could count the number of His years. It might be a very large number, but you can count to a very large number—it just takes a while! So if the number of God’s years truly cannot be counted, then He must be eternal—without a beginning and without an end.
Paul stated in Romans 1:20 that we can learn that God is eternal simply from observing the world around us. In that verse, he writes, “For [God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” When we look at the world around us, we see a collection of things that all began to exist at some point in time. Even our universe itself began to exist at a point in time, as the Bible tells us, and as all but the most radical scientists will admit. Now, we all know that when things begin to exist, they don’t just come from nowhere—they come from something that existed before them, as you did with your parents. You began to exist when you were conceived, and you came from your parents, who existed before you did.
So we can conclude that if our universe began to exist at some point in time, then there must have been something that existed before the universe that caused it to exist. Now, logic also tells us that something which began to exist at some point in time must ultimately come from something which has always existed—something that did not begin to exist. Something that begins to exist is the effect of something else which caused it, and you cannot have an endless chain of causes and effects.
Think of it this way—suppose that you wanted to build a house. Before you can start, you have to have the necessary permits to build. Now suppose that you had to apply for a literally endless number of permits, and you had to have Permit A before you could get Permit B, and so on. Now, when could you start building your house? The answer is never—because you would never get to the end of this endless string of permits. There would always be one more permit that you had to have in order to start construction.
This scenario illustrates an endless chain of causes and effects. Something that begins to exist is an effect of something else, and there cannot be an endless chain of causes and effects behind that existing thing. Otherwise, the whole chain of cause and effect could never get started. Eventually, there has to be a cause which is uncaused; there has to be something that exists which simply exists and which did not need a cause.
Now that your brain has exploded, let’s remodel it by talking about what this attribute of God means for our lives. We learn several important lessons by reflecting on God’s eternal existence.
1. God does not need you
That statement may sound harsh, but this thought is actually a very healthy one for us to embrace because it puts us in our place, yet it also magnifies God’s love for you. Let me explain.
If God is eternal and thus had no beginning, this means that He exists by His own power. If that’s the case, then He has no needs that He cannot meet for Himself. He is thus self-sufficient, meaning that He doesn’t need anyone else. God doesn’t need someone to look after Him or take care of Him or any such thing. Here is how Paul put it in Acts 17:24-25—“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”
What could God possibly need from us since He existed just fine without us? Perhaps someone has told you that God created us because He was lonely. God was never lonely! He is a Trinity—three persons in one being! God doesn’t need us to take care of Him, He doesn’t need us to love Him, and He doesn’t even need us in order to act in the world!
This observation cuts us down to size and keeps us from becoming proud, but here’s the thought the builds us up in a healthy way—God doesn’t need you, yet He chooses to love you. Isn’t that amazing? He doesn’t need you, yet you are not insignificant to Him. He chooses to love you and He chooses to use you to accomplish His will in this world. He sent His Son to die for you—not because He couldn’t stand to live without you, but simply because that’s the kind of God that He is. Here is how God describes Himself in Exodus 34:6-7—“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” This awe-inspiring God is completely self-sufficient, yet He chooses to extend mercy and grace to us, as we remember today in the Lord’s Supper.
2. God does not experience urgency
Since God’s existence cannot be measured by time, He does not experience time the way that we do. 2 Peter 3:8 says, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” This verse tells us that God’s interaction with time is so different from our own.
This lesson is so important to remember when we’re thinking about God’s work in our lives. When we have problems that feel extremely urgent, or when we pray about something for weeks or months or years and it seems like nothing is happening, we have to remember that God just doesn’t experience time the way we do. Urgency is only experienced by those who feel the pressure of time bearing down on them. We feel urgency when we feel like we are losing time or when we feel like we don’t have enough time.
But God doesn’t have such limitations on Him. The constraints of time do not bind Him. He can literally roll back the clock if He chooses, as He did for Joshua in Joshua 10 and for Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20.
This lesson simply reminds us that we cannot let ourselves become angry with God if He doesn’t seem to be working by our schedule. If He doesn’t seem to be answering one of your prayer requests, or if He seems to be “late” in coming through for you, just remember that God does not have to fit into your Day Timer!
3. God does not act in haste
Sometimes, we make mistakes or we do poor work or we make bad decisions because we act in haste. Sometimes we throw something together just before a deadline, or we make an uninformed decision because we feel the weight of urgency. But God does not have such constraints, so we don’t have to wonder if His work is imperfect because He rushed through it. Nor do we need to ask if God made a bad decision because He “didn’t have time to think through it.”
God’s actions are deliberate and on purpose. He is never forced to act by deadlines or by the fear that He may miss out on a moment in time that will never come around again. And so, this is just one of the reasons that God does not make mistakes. So when God acts in your life or when he allows certain circumstances to come into your life, you can know for sure that He did not make a hasty decision or have a spur-of-the-moment reaction. He knows exactly what He is doing and He does it at exactly the right time.
Learning what we have today about our God magnifies His love, grace, and mercy that we remember in the Lord’s Supper. That such a being would make such a sacrifice for us is indescribable. So as we partake, let us mourn for our sins which have made the Lord’s sacrifice necessary for our forgiveness, and let us rejoice over God’s willingness to provide it.
Notes:
1. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978), 1.
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